In The News › BGR report spurs debate over judgeships before state Supreme Court’s Judicial Council

BGR report spurs debate over judgeships before state Supreme Court’s Judicial Council

By Richard Rainey

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

October 8, 2013

A government watchdog’s report suggesting Louisiana has too many judges stirred a hornets’ nest among the New Orleans judiciary Tuesday, as one judge after another sought to discredit it before the state Supreme Court’s Judicial Council.

The judges attacked the report’s methodology and advised the council, which is more than two years deep into a study of the judicial branch’s efficacy, that it should act carefully and deliberately before reaching any decision — especially one that could recommend the elimination of a judgeship.

The report by the Bureau of Governmental Research indicates that Louisiana could stand to lose 24 percent of its judgeships and that New Orleans could make do with 20 judges, rather than the 45 that now preside over its seven courts.

“The court maintains that to adopt the drastic measures in the BGR report would truly compromise public safety,” said Camille Buras, chief judge of the New Orleans Criminal Court.

BGR Executive Director Janet Howard countered that the report only offers a preliminary glance at the issue and admits its own shortcomings. She also noted that BGR’s researchers employed the same methods used by the Judicial Council, the research arm of the state’s high court, when it studied judgeships across the state shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

BGR published the report now, she said, because 80 percent of New Orleans’ judges are up for reelection in November 2014 and state law bans the elimination of any seat before the end of a judge’s term, which can span six or eight years, depending on the court.

“BGR did not set out to come up with a definitive number of judges,” Howard said afterward. “We’re all on board that you need to make adjustments, but it has to be done so we’re not locked in for another six years.”

The Judicial Council, making its second examination of the state’s judiciary since Katrina, is looking at the cost to run the courts against the amount of work each office accomplishes. A full report, spearheaded by state Sen. Ed Murray, D-New Orleans, is due in February. Should it make that deadline, its findings could influence the Legislature as it decides whether to reduce or increase the judges’ ranks during the 2014 legislative session.

But so far it has only produced one of three scheduled reports since it began its work in 2011, a track record that had Howard concerned Murray’s committee may not make its February deadline.

Murray said Tuesday the BGR report would have no bearing on his investigation. While he acknowledged he would not take a recommendation of eliminating judges off the table, he said his committee is more focused on looking at the judicial branch as a whole, including disparities in staff resources and salaries between courts and parishes.

“I don’t know if we’ll make a specific recommendation for the number of judges,” he said.

Kim Boyle, a council member and attorney with the Phelps Dunbar law firm, backed Murray’s approach.

“Look at these issues from a holistic standpoint,” she said. “This is not an Orleans Parish issue. This is a statewide issue.”

That reflects a similar argument Murray made in May when he effectively killed New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s bid to eliminate two Juvenile Court judgeships during this year’s legislative session. Murray had asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to wait until his committee released its report.

BGR said it collected data in the same manner the Judicial Council has used since 1980: by weighing an individual judge’s workload and associating different types of cases on a points system. The report acknowledged that the formula treated easily completed cases the same as complex cases with multiple defendants or charges, a contention that the judges, particularly Buras, used to condemn its findings.

Judge Robert Morrison, chairman of the council’s Trial Court Committee, asked that the council revisit its evaluation process and draft a new method that he said would more accurately portray a judge’s workload.

The 17-member council, comprised mostly of sitting judges, lawyers, court clerks and other legal professionals whose livelihoods depend on the courts, lent the New Orleans judges a mostly sympathetic ear. At one point, the council dismissed a written request by state Sen. Conrad Appel, R-Metairie, asking it to look into consolidating New Orleans courts. Judge John Michael Guidry, a council member, said there was no proper method in place to make such a judgment call.

Supreme Court Chief Judge Bernette Johnson, the council chairwoman, also asked several judges questions that led to their explanations of nuances in their workloads that didn’t show up in the BGR’s data and supported the prevailing opinion that each case is different. At Johnson’s prompting, Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Ernestine Gray, for instance, described how one adoption case took years to adjudicate.

Gray also tried to stress that Juvenile Court judges must abide by a plethora of federal laws dictating a court’s approach to case involving a child, a fact that she said increases the time it takes to adjudicate each case. But BGR had compared New Orleans juvenile court to the state’s other three — in Caddo, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes — which are also subject to the same federal laws, when it determined judges in New Orleans have a significantly lighter case load with more judges on the bench.

Boyle criticized BGR for not including in the report the opinions of lawyers and litigants who appear regularly before New Orleans judges. She said that although New Orleans has a lower population since 2005, the BGR report didn’t take into account the number of tourists who can clog the city’s court system.

“This is an access to justice issue,” she said. “This is an access to the courts issue.”

But BGR appeared to have at least one ally on the council in Charles Beard, a citizen member. He was concerned that Judge Morrison’s request for a revision of how the council evaluates judgeships could lead to costly delays. BGR had estimated that each judgeship costs taxpayers and litigants roughly $3.4 million over a six-year term.

“We all know we have a short amount of time here, but it looks like the coordinated strategy of this today is: If we just make the point that it’s really complicated and we’ve got to throw out the system we’ve used for years as worthless and start all over and get a new system of points then surely we can’t get it done by February. Then we won’t have to worry about it for seven more years,” Beard said. “To the public, I don’t think that looks very good.”

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